Romantic love evolving

Q:  I'm in a history class that traces romantic and marital love through history.  It hasn't always been what it is today.  For one thing, both the bride and groom have a say, rather than just the groom, or the parents of both the bride and groom, or some other external "matchmaker."  How does "romantic love" fit with the direction that society is evolving?  G.B.

A:  The word "romance" is derived from "Rome," "Roman," "Romans."  Rome has bequeathed us many things, primary among them the Roman Catholic church, centered in the Vatican at Rome.  Rome has also bequeathed us the concept of "romance."

In order to know the direction that society is evolving, in regard to "romantic love," we must first know the meaning of romance as it is used today.  This topic could fill volumes.  In a short journal entry, I will share what is evident to me after twenty years of experience hearing, as a therapist, intimate stories and struggles that people experience around this very topic.

"Romantic love" tends to serve as a decoy, a diversion, a distraction, from the essential work of the inner journey.  We tend to lose ourselves in the merging with another.  Between two completed and wholly developed beings, the merging is sublime.  However, generally, the merging that is known as romantic love, and often marital love, is between two individuals who have not completed the essential work of individual development.  This version of "romantic love" is another legacy of Rome -- which decimated ancient culture and the value carried in much ancient wisdom.

You ask how "romantic love" fits with the direction that society is evolving.  Romantic love, in today's western culture, is a phase which, hopefully, will end up ruling out for the evolving individual the romance of merging with another human being as a substitute for the fully realized individual.  Two half-developed individuals do not make a whole person.  Two partially developed individuals, merging in romantic, and often in marital, love, combine the lack of completion and the lack of development they each bring into the union.

Don't the individuals also bring into the union the areas in which they are maturely developed?  Yes.  With varying results.  Often, it is the shared, hidden pain between two individuals that resonates and creates "chemistry" that can masquerade as romantic love.  As the two then begin to merge, the work of development comes clear.  Some can proceed and grow as a member of a couple; some cannot.  In our evolutionary journey as a species, "romantic love" serves as a classroom in which individuals can learn what can only be learned through attempted merging with a mate.  It can also serve as a filter, ruling out for us the illusion of completeness that such merging brings.